Alluka's Doll
by Killugonwriter
Summary: Killua wakes to silence. Which can't be good, since the nightmare was real. Oneshot.


**A/N: As of now, this story has been revised, and better fufills my high standards. Some plot holes have been filled in, so I hope this acheives your highest expectations.**

Upon thunderclouds the angels mourn her, crying sorrow-laden tears that fall to the earth. Drowning in a nightmare, he is eerily still. Remnants of his desire to break free reflect in his taut face. Within his subconscious, a hell brews, and he tirelessly tries to graze the surface. Although, Killua doesn't know if he'll make it. A deafening thunder clap bellows as lightning cleaves the sky in two. Killua startles awake, as if the storm has subdued his damnation. For a moment, he is absent from this reality and enquires where he is. There is an ache in his temples as he reminisces about the nightmare he just had. But then the cold nip of the floorboards whisper to him that the nightmare is something he will never wake from. His brother, Illumi, injecting her with a needle that made Alluka seize until she didn't move anymore. Killua was helpless, knocked out by him in a way he can't remember and locked in here.

It was real.

He stands as if someone licked his toes with flames. Heartbeat pulsing too loudly in his ears, he can't breathe. She's alive. She has to be. His scabby knuckles rattle the door, delirious with the haste to escape. Her shrill screams from before everything went black pierce through his flesh and chill him to the bone. Alluka, his beloved sister, with eyes the color of bluebird and a voice that dripped of adoration. Alluka, the girl with dimples that only showed for him. His beloved little sister. The wounds on his hands re-open and blood trickles down his wrists, but he doesn't feel it.

"Alluka!"

Fleetingly, Killua's hand seizes the doorknob. His insides plummet when he finds it, chillingly, unlocked. It's as if Illumi wants him to see it all, whatever that entails. He turns the knob, the minute click pierces the silence. It's a silence that chills blood and raises his goosebumps. Everything in Killua becomes motionless, his vision inverts on the door creaking ajar. Alluka? His pupils become pinpricks, the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

The floor is red. Gore is splattered like spray paint against the oak boards. It smells like Alluka, sharp with something metallic and her natural scent of honeysuckle. The bile rises in his throat and he retches on the floor, only for it to mix with the blood. It's the chicken and rice Alluka had made for him.

Something inhuman emanates from his throat.

Someone must have stripped all of his flesh, only leaving his bones to rattle in his sockets. His bare feet near the edge of what was his sister, the smell of death becoming stronger when he moves closer, too strong to be just blood. She's under him. She's in the floor.

Killua's fingernails hinge under a loose board, his raw hands straining as he pulls it free. His and her blood coats his hands like paint and he tosses the stained board to the side, unable to think about anything else. Between the scaffolding, her severed head stares up at him. Blood drips from her mouth and her blue eyes are a deathly gray, like a light that has been blown out. More boards fly, and he finds he can't stop, even when his face becomes a bloodless white. An arm. A leg. A hand. A torso.

He never knew that one day he would be here, holding his sister's dismembered head, humming the song she loved to sing in the shower. Petting what's left of her long black hair.

After he gets the shovel from the shed, he buries her behind the house, under a patch of dandelions, her favorite weed that she insisted was a real flower. He cuts a square from the fabric of the shirt she was wearing and slips it in his pocket. He can't call the authorities. That would mean thinking about it, and thinking means terror. He doesn't want to see anything tomorrow, when the sun will hit those dandelions just right.

For days after he is a soulless body, not eating or sleeping. As he starves he feels his stomach shrivel below his ribs. He lies in bed, the square of fabric under his pillow. Once in awhile he pulls it out, and run his hands over the pink fabric. It was her favorite color, pink. She would color in her coloring books with pink, fat glittery crayons. He remembers how her tongue would stick out, and creative shimmer would dance in her eyes. Or, how she would play with her dolls and drink tea with them with her china set. Alluka loved those dolls, and how Killua would splurge on them for her. They were on shelves, the floor, the bed. She slept with them and wouldn't fall asleep until they did. But Killua is deathly to smile at the thought.

Whenever Killua's eyes drifts off he has terrifying nightmares, so his eyes become wild and wide, as if duct-taped open. Dark circles frame his fading blue eyes, making look like he has aged a millennium in a matter of days.

Days after it happened, he sits up in bed for the first time. Staggering on his wobbly, weak legs, he sits on the windowsill, staring at that patch of dandelions, where the ground bulges. A sad smile traces his chapped lips, and then the tears won't stop and slosh over his grave cheekbones. They tell him he's real. That this is real.

A cloud the color of ash ghosts the sky and Killua numbly watches those dandelions lose their sunlight. A moment later there are raindrops tapping on his windowpane, and all he can think about is if Alluka is cold out there. If she is shivering under that soil. Killua imagines the blood and filth from Illumi's hands being returned to the earth. Solemnly, his fingertips grace the glass.

His lips form the word: "Ah...Lu….Ka," And the rain throbs and swells like her heartbeat when she slept.

When he slips back into the bed, the night falls quickly. The rain has dissolved into a light hazy mist and the air becomes cool. Killua curls his toes under the comforter as the chill traces his skin with a sharp fingernail. The moonlight bathes him in a lunar glow and his pale form looks dainty and fragile, like the dolls Alluka used to love. Through the darkness, a silhouette looms over the waning moon. A doll. Had Alluka left it here all those nights ago? When he looks closer, the eyes are gouged out and filled with black. Her mouth is turned upwards into a blackened smile. Gasping, Killua turns on the lamp on his bedside table, but, under the light, the doll is not horrific. The doll has hand-painted eyes and a porcelain unblemished face. But it's a doll he's never seen before. And he would've known if he's seen it.

The doll looks exactly like his sister. Right down to the flowy pink shirt and green skirt she was wearing the day it happened. Her favorite headband frames the big blue eyes of Alluka. Had someone dug up her grave and stolen her eyes for this doll? Lips pulling apart, his withered hands enrapture this precious doll.

But where did it come from? He runs a thumb over the same fabric that lies under his pillow. Her glossy, dolly lips almost smile at him. And then he sees in childish handwriting, Alluka's handwriting, the word 'Nanika.' It's written in the crook of her arm, partly hidden by her sleeve. A wideness finds Killua's face as he doesn't know what to make of it. His jaw sets, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Grasping the doll like it his precious sister, Nanika floods water into his eyes, and before he can stop himself, he is out of his bedroom door. The stench of death from the blood on the foyer floor makes his tears spill over but he keeps moving. Nanika's sleeves sashay, her long black hair twirling around his fingertips. Through his tears Killua smiles down at the precious doll.

He nears a white-painted door with pink flowers painted on it. Out of habit, he raps twice on the doorframe. He gets nothing in response before he realizes. Nanika smiles up at him. Entering her room, he carefully steps over the shadowy blobs of her stuffed animals on the floor. He doesn't have the heart to disturb them. He nears her bed, the blanket curled over as if she had just leapt out of bed a moment ago. Frowning in his melancholy, Killua gently tucks Nanika into Alluka's spot on the bed. And with that, he turns to leave.

"Killua," everything halts, the world turning, the stars exploding a million light years away. "Pat my head."

Swiveling his head around, he sees the black pits of Nanika's features, the ones he had thought he had mistakenly imagined. He answers before he can comprehend it. What has come over him, he will never know.

"Okay," Killua pets her soft hair with his fingertips, giving Nanika a good pat, just the way Alluka had loved him to do. The void that the loss of Alluka had made aches. His lips press together, wondering what is happening.

"Nanika loves Killua," the doll says, and a chill goes down his spine. Turning away, he returns to his bedroom and locks the door. His back presses to the door once he closes it, breathing heavy.

'I need a shower,' Killua thinks. His mind whirs like a ride in an amusement park and he can't stop it. What is Nanika? He grabs a clean change of clothes. Where did she come from? His stomach coils in uneasiness. He crosses his bedroom and enters his bathroom, shutting the door. Does Nanika want something from him? Undressing quickly, he steps into the shower, the freezing water making his back arch, but he's too distressed to set it to a warmer setting.

Lathering his hair, he misses spots on his head when he rinses. The shampoo still lingers, but he could care less. Feeling a bit better, he wraps a towel around his thin hips and steps out of the shower. The steam makes the walls almost wet. He dresses and then he stares at his gray form in the foggy mirror. His mind spins thoughts on Nanika.

Druggedly, he watches as invisible finger wipes away the fog on the mirror, forming words. In shaky handwriting is says: SING FOR ME, KILLUA.

It's Nanika. Suddenly another request has been made. He gets over the initial shock of this actually happening. For Alluka's sake, he will do it. Swallowing dryly, his shoulders tremble. The notes fall from his lips, sweet but broken. It's the song Alluka loved endlessly, the one she begged him to sing as a lullaby. She would look at him with watery, begging eyes, and pull on his sleeve. Something within him breaks, his heart is smashed. When he finishes, he stands there more broken than when he came. He feels like giving up. Stepping out of his bathroom, that's when he sees the carvings in the wall.

PLAY WITH ME, KILLUA. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

Head whirring as he looks around, he doesn't know what Nanika means. Until something whispers airily in his ear:

"Hide and seek."

And then here he is, listening to Nanika's requests again, searching the house from head to toe. The bathtub, the cabinets in the kitchen, Alluka's room. He comes up with nothing. And then, he heads outside, thinking of only one place she could possibly be.

Amongst the dandelions.

He finds the doll lying among the yellow blooms, at the crest of the mound of dirt Alluka lies under.

"Killua, make a wish," Nanika's eyes turn to black. So, like the last few times, he listens to her. She's the closest thing to Alluka he has left.

"I want…" Killua swallows thickly, but he says it anyway. "I want to be with my sister."

There is a moment of hesitation, and then his head rolls on the grass.

 **A/N: Please rate and review!**

 **-Kitty**


End file.
